Christmas fishing!

YEP!  I went fishing for Christmas last year.  Crystal got invited to go by one of her teachers and he said she could bring friends, so I got to go, too!  Thank goodness because otherwise, who knows what I would have done on Christmas.  We went to Nojiriko, which is a lake about a half hour north of where we live.  I think it might even be in Niigata prefecture rather than Nagano, but I am not sure.  In other news, it snowed the whole day up by the lake, but not in Iiyama.  Odd...Anyway... pictures tell it best again.

The boats. 

Inside the boat.  Things to notice: heaters and holes in the floor.

Holes in the floor.  This is how we fished!  And the rest of the floor was tatami mats, which are the straw mats that are used inside houses.  No shoes on tatami.

Equipment we borrowed from Crystal's awesome teacher.  Poles, bait. colanders with ice and weights.

Size comparison.  What size fish do you think we were going for?!

The bait... pink grubs.  ew

Did I mention ew?  This is the awesome teacher baiting my hooks for me.  I learned to do it by the end:

Here is me baiting the hooks for myself.  Why was it so gross?!  Because (a) the grubs wiggle in your fingers, as shown in this picture...

..and because (b) after they were on the hooks, you had to cut them in half so they would be oozing and attract the fish.  Look closely at my face and you can see the disgust.  ew ew ew

My first catch!  The fish were TINY!  Like 5 to 8cm.  My first reaction to catching it "awww, its cute!~" which got a nice reaction from everyone on the boat.  Also, I do not like to touch fish, so the teacher or Crystal had to take them off the hooks for me after I caught them.

Pretty winter scenes.  That is another boat like the one we were on.

Fish on a hook.  Tiny, right?

Some fish I caught!

my "saigo no saigo" catch.  Meaning very last just as the boat was ready to head back.  I caught 3 on one line!!  But then one of them fell off a hook... you can see it on the floor.

Here is the jumper.  He even managed to "stand up" on his own!  Talented little guy!

Crystal and I put our fish together into one colander!  We got between 60 and 70 together.  We were so proud until we discovered that other teachers had caught over 100 themselves.  lol.  Also, we did not know what to do with the fish, so we gave them away.

One last shot from shore before we headed back.  It snowed a lot that day.